


Open Up the Sky

by ShiryaW



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, PINK FLUFFY UNICORNS DANCING ON RAINBOWS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 12:27:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15170771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiryaW/pseuds/ShiryaW
Summary: Franky and Bridget are reciting their vows, and all their families are there to see it. A reflection on how we got to 6x03 from season 1 and a kind of farewell piece for what I call the "first Wentworth generation".





	Open Up the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely ever write fluff or anything remotely happy, but my heart has been bursting with rainbows since 6x03 and I needed to process it. I am sad to see them go, but I am forever grateful for the force of hope and love that Bridget and Franky have been to so many of us. This is my goodbye - to canon, at least.

“I, Francesca Doyle, take you, Bridget Westfall…”

It was an outdoor wedding, and a long awaited one at that. After all charges against Franky were dropped and she was released from Wentworth – for the last and final time – the two of them got engaged virtually the next day. However, the marriage ceremony itself was still a ways away because Franky refused to get married without her family – all of her family – being there to see it, and Bridget agreed. It took years for everyone to catch up. Even if it had taken twice as long, it wouldn’t have mattered.

As she sat in an elegant crimson gown that flowed effortlessly along the chair and towards the trimmed grass below, Vera Bennett briefly closed her eyes in order to focus on keeping her head from tilting to the side. It shouldn’t have surprised her. It should have stopped being surprising to her the day Bridget pressed her forehead to Franky’s outside her front door as Vera watched from behind the blinds.

That day… She had trusted Bridget to an extent, but she was not one hundred percent certain of her intentions. Vera had been one of the first people to catch wind of these _inappropriate relations_ at Wentworth. She had fired Bridget over the rumors, she remembered. The idea of someone who was there to help the women using them – one of them – to her advantage – it rubbed a diligent woman like her the wrong way. That year was, quite frankly, garbage for her, and maybe she had become unable to see anything but filth and disorder around her. Maybe discovering an illness in herself had led her to see it in everyone else too. On a basic, borderline masochistic level, she'd wanted to. She'd wanted to be justified in watching the days pass her by in shades of gray. She'd wanted to believe the world was rotten to the core so that her perception of it would not be wrong. That’s what she had seen in Bridget Westfall then, a malign cancerous growth, a manipulative, hopeless force of chaos. She’d seen a Joan Ferguson in Bridget Westfall, and a Bridget Westfall in Joan Ferguson. She gulped down a lump in her throat. But she had found herself somewhere deep within. Bridget had guided her towards the truth then. Bridget never gave up on her, just like she never gave up on Franky Doyle.

So it shouldn’t have surprised her, the way Bridget’s name rolled off Franky’s tongue like it was an ancient incantation and a plea for the gods to grant us a bountiful harvest and mild winters to come. Franky said _Bridget_ in a way that sounded almost unnatural – and Vera realized she had never heard the brunette refer to her soon (very soon)‑to‑be wife by this name – like it belonged to another time and another world… She had never heard Franky Doyle utter a word with so much reverence.

And it shouldn’t have surprised her how the vibrant hues of devotion made Bridget’s eyes seem deeper somehow. This was a woman who rarely showed her true face and all she stood for to the world around her, but in this moment, she wanted everyone to know her. She wanted to scream into the world, _I love her_. Vera remembered the sound of that, too. _I’m sorry. I had to see her. I love her._ Bridget Westfall reduced to a shadow of her former self, her edges falling off and shattering on the perfectly vacuumed carpet of Vera’s office. Vera attempting to glue back together this porcelain she did not yet understand. Bridget had apologized for her love then – and never again.

And Vera looked on with pride.

“…to be my lawfully wedded wife…”

Why does everything have to bloody change? Boomer had asked this question countless times in her life. Once, she had just wanted for things to stay the same, to be sure of the sun rising in the morning and missing the moon by a hair at dusk. Franky had left her with Bridget once before, and then she came back and she was different. Daz had left. Bea had left. Maxine had left. Doreen had left. Liz had betrayed her, and therefore also left her. Wentworth swallowed everyone Boomer had ever loved in its voracious maw. No matter how hard she pushed and fought against the tide, her efforts meant nothing to these primordial waves that had shaped the earth to its will.

Everything kept bloody changing all the time. And without those changes, she never would have met Maxine. She never would have had the chance to fall in love with her new best friend, because _new_ would have been a word that meant nothing in such a universe. Did those changes make her a raging lezzo? Boomer didn’t give half a damn what she was to anyone but herself anymore. The sleeping bundle in her arms stirred weakly, and she whispered a few words in its ear that was just so tiny. The baby relaxed and a wide smile spread on the new mother’s face. Yeah. She was a mum. A really good mum. She could dig change after all.

“…to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse…”

Maxine laid a hand on Boomer’s arm and squeezed gently as her eyes followed Franky’s lips. Paradoxically, she and Franky had only gotten close after Wentworth. They were different people on the outside, people who didn’t have to lie to and use each other. Franky had supported Maxine through her recovery from cancer as a direct result of being there for Booms at first, but that kind of thing grows on you (Maxine suppressed a chuckle at her mind’s wording). She never failed to objectify Maxine’s body in that particular Franky way. Had it not been for Bridget, Maxine would have interpreted her remarks as ill‑advised advances of a lesbian sleazebag, but having seen the two of them together, she would only raise an eyebrow and let out a soft _mm-hmm_ because she knew what it was really about. And she would often return the favor by reminding Franky how much Bridget was missing her whenever they were apart for some reason or other. And Franky would call her a useless sap with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye and ask how Booms’s pregnancy was going. As it turns out, they were people who instinctively knew what the other needed and were never in short supply of it.

“…for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”

Doreen knew the smile on Franky’s face, but she couldn’t remember where from. Franky was grinning most of the time these days, but this was different. No, she had to search farther back for the roots of it. With Kim, maybe? No, that wasn’t it. Franky had smiled just as genuinely with Kim by her side for all the different reasons.

Franky and her stupid macho attitude and her mind games with the screws and her messing with things that were important to Doreen. It used to piss her off at Wentworth, it really did. But then again… it was Franky who set up Doreen’s first “date” with Nash. Such a picturesque image, the two of them in the garden shed, just narrowly avoiding the guards’ peripheral vision, about to show Wentworth what it meant to love against all odds. It was Franky who set this period of her life in motion, although she couldn’t have known it at the time. Could she?

And then Doreen remembered. She knew that smile. She recognized herself in it, the day she got parole and was released and she took her first, incandescent steps towards freedom. The sun had seared her skin and the sounds of life deafened her, and then – then Nash was there with her son. Balloons. The endless, inviting blue sky. And Doreen smiled, oblivious to the fact that one of her biggest supporters and part of her family was watching the exchange from a rooftop behind her. Franky told her about her rooftop heist one day, several years later when she visited Doreen and Nash’s place and brought a stuffed frog for her son knowing that he was neck‑deep in a Kermit phase. “Don’t worry, I took all the gear out,” Franky had said with a wink then, earning herself a slap on the shoulder.

“…to love and to cherish until death do us part.”

Will Jackson smiled despite himself. There he was in his Sunday best, witnessing assertions of limitless love tumble from the mouth of a woman who should have reminded him of the person who had taken his love away from him. Truly there was a measure of irony to be read from this. Perhaps he should have felt anger, and perhaps he should have felt wronged. Yet he sat calmly with his hands clasped in his lap in solemn contemplation as a cool breeze caressed his face. He had made sure to search deep within his soul for the hurt and disdain he was expecting to find before coming here – and came up empty. Or rather, he could see all of it from behind a glassy veil if he really tried – but the one who had taken his love from him, that was a different person who shared Franky’s name. That Franky? She was an aggressive, brash, disrespectful brat who didn’t know any better than to lash out at everyone when she felt the ground crumbling beneath her feet. In fact, that Franky was not so different from himself back then, he mused. It’s just that that Franky existed on the inside. That Franky didn’t have anywhere to hide.

The woman he saw in front of him looked nothing like her. This was no confused little girl in deep waters. This Franky was different physically, from the tattoos to the locks of hair that almost reached her elbows, and what he saw behind her eyes arranged itself into a whole different scene, too. Where _that_ Franky was a roaring tempest on a stormy sea, _this_ Franky floated gently over still waters. This Franky had lost faith and found it again, not unlike himself. And if this Franky could look into the eyes of Bridget Westfall just once to melt into her, then… then Will was happy for her.

“I, Bridget, take you, Franky, to be my lawfully wedded wife. I promise to never leave your side, to hold you just as close in times of strife as in times of joy, because—”

Allie was expecting Bridget’s gaze to drop to the ground as her breath got caught in her throat and her eyes welled up with tears. It never did. Her smile widened as she noticed Franky’s fingers squeeze Bridget’s hands tighter and her body inch closer. Just a bit longer, they had to last just a little longer. Looking back on it now, she couldn’t believe she never became conscious of the love that loomed between them when Franky and her were locked up together. Look at them—even at their own wedding they could barely stand being _so far_ from one another, not holding each other. They had once been professionals when it came to standing back, but now that the only need prompting them to do so was propriety, those skills were deteriorating quickly. Allie was going to be so pissed with Franky if she stuffed up her own wedding.

But as she knew, Franky’s plans rarely backfired. The girl had the lucky clover etched into her soul. She could pull off everything—and she did it right, methodically, focused on her goals. Allie truly believed that on some level, Franky had always known her path would lead her here to this day with Bridget standing in front of her. She couldn’t have picked better, either. This was Bridget Westfall, for god’s sake – the woman who steered the love of Allie’s life towards her and the woman who held her when this love ran its course, when Allie’s world was falling apart and she with it. This was the woman who made her realize, through her words and her actions, that if Allie had a time machine at her disposal, she would have smashed it to smithereens with her own two hands. Most importantly, this was the woman who convinced her that the only way to move was forward in the end. “Our stories never end,” Bridget had told her once during a session. “They just move onto the next chapter.”

“—you are the best thing that ever happened to me…”

Liz stole a concerned glance at her daughter. She had not wanted to bring her along to this, having had to dry Sophie’s tears over a crush on Franky and nurse her back to health multiple times in the past. Then again, it had been years, and Sophie was a grown and capable woman. Liz was reassured in this knowledge when she saw her daughter looking on in awe, her lips parted and chest heaving almost as much as the lovers’.

Liz sighed inaudibly as she turned back to the women in the spotlight. She really ought to stop being so worried all the time, she thought, but couldn’t quite help herself. The absence of her children in her life for seven long, excruciating years, led her to subconsciously adopt anyone she perceived to be lacking guidance in their life. Franky was one of her worst children by far – and she would say this with love. Franky had been the rebellious teenager Liz missed out on raising. The stunts she would pull, and the ways she’d talk back! Always convinced she had everything figured out perfectly, that one, always making sure the world knew exactly how much she disagreed with it. She had Liz pinned to the wall once when Liz had called out her bluff and sent her crashing to the ground with no mercy. She could have hurt her then, could have kicked and punched and screamed, but she didn’t. And Liz knew then that Franky needed her to do this. And that she needed to do this, too.

Franky was a reminder of the mistakes Liz had made with her family. Not a painful reminder, but one Liz would look up to when she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. “You know you need to get your shit together, Liz,” she had told her once when Liz had found solace in the bottle again. And the truth of the matter was, she was wrong. Liz didn’t know. She often didn’t know these obvious, glaring, clear‑as‑day things until Franky Doyle came along to point them out and stick her face in them in her own uncompromising way.

But one thing Liz could tell without Franky doing anything just taking in the way Franky’s arms stiffened to hide the shivers she had. She was in love, completely, utterly, and undeniably in love with the blonde in the blinding white wedding dress. Liz allowed herself a smile and an exhale. They all grow up eventually.

“…and I love you to the moon and back.”

If Bea Smith had been there – with Debbie by her side – would she have been smiling, too? Would she have worn her hair red as the blazing sunset and clapped along with the rest of her family? Would she have recalled the way her hands shook in Bridget Westfall’s office the day she came to ask–well, this love thing, how does one go about it? Would she have understood now more than ever what Bridget had meant when she said “fuck the labels”? Maxine couldn’t be sure, of course, but she had a feeling that something along those lines would have come to pass. Bea had already learned all the lessons that would be taught on this day, but she would have cried. She would have been the first to shed tears if she could see her own future painted in front of her with thousands of crisp, defined brushstrokes. And she would have been mocked mercilessly for it.

Allie thought that the one cloud in the sky looked kind of like a seahorse.

**Author's Note:**

> "Now we're standing here, the story of our lives. We've faced all our fears. Opened up the sky."


End file.
